Categories
General

Where’s my phone? (New levels of dopiness)

Need to leave. Where’s my phone? Not on the counter. Not on my bedside table. Not on the desk. Not on the kitchen table. Not on the dresser. Not on the couch. Look again in all those places. Not found. Really need to go. Reach for home phone. Dial mobile number. It rings. It’s in  ... [More]

Categories
Culture

Are mobile phones the new cigarettes?

Fifty years ago the people waiting on this bench might have been smoking — now they’re all fiddling with their phones. It’s long been thought that mobile phones might be replacing cigarettes: Teenagers may be getting healthier because mobile phones are replacing cigarettes as a symbol of rebellion and fashion. Clive Bates, Ash director, suggested  ... [More]

Categories
Retrospectives

Telstra brochure from 1997 explains new-fangled “text messages”

Clearing out some old books, I found this from 1997. It’s a Telstra brochure explaining a new product they’re introducing: the “SMS Text Message Service.” Front cover: Middle pages: Back page: Everything was new once upon a time, right? From the brochure (and this matches my recollection), initially messages could not be sent between operators.  ... [More]

Categories
General

The prepaid phone saga

A while back I gave eldest son my old (but quite capable) mobile phone, and got him a SIM card that looked to be a reasonable cheap basic prepaid phone service: Woolworths Everyday Mobile. This worked fine until early October when the phone stopped working. Or to be precise, the SIM stopped working. We tried  ... [More]

Categories
transport

How timely are Metro’s SMS alerts? (and SMS vs web)

Last Friday MX ran a story about Metro plans to shut down its SMS text alert service, in favour of pushing people towards the mobile web site and Twitter. This was sparked by an ad earlier in the week in MX, station posters, and an email sent to SMS subscribers, all encouraging people to “say  ... [More]

Categories
Geek

How to reject a call on an iPhone

iPhones are so easy to use. A colleague’s iPhone rings on his desk when he’s elsewhere in a meeting, and the screen lights up to say you slide to answer. Great! But how does one reject the call? I ask around to my office full of iPhone users. Nobody knows. Hilarious. I’m not just wording  ... [More]

Categories
Geek

New phone

Well, I finally got a new phone. In the end I decided to “think different” and not get an iPhone. Instead I’ve got the HTC Desire S, running Android 2.3. As I figure out how it works, I’m blogging about it over on Geekrant: http://www.geekrant.org/2011/06/04/new-phone-htc-desire-s/ Suffice to say, still getting used to it after the  ... [More]

Categories
Geek

I need a new phone. Should I get iPhone or Android?

I’m genuinely undecided as to which I should get. What do you think? Google Forms doesn’t stop you voting more than once. Please don’t. I’ll publish the results in a few days. See below. Disclaimer: Have your say via a vote or a comment, but I won’t necessarily go with the majority view. Update 6pm:  ... [More]